The share class is the position

Neither man expressed a view on a business this week. Both took a position in a claim structure, and in both cases the class of share — not the company — is the instrument.

Slim bought the class that cannot normally vote but carries a tag-along entitlement into an unpriced mandatory offer, and may have re-acquired the vote through three years of unpaid preferred dividends. Zuckerberg spent six weeks negotiating a new class into existence — non-voting, paid as a one-for-one dividend on every existing share, 20% immediately sellable and 80% stapled to voting stock — and is now sorting which vehicle holds which block before it lands. One bought into an existing class's rights; the other commissioned a class and is arranging the furniture before it arrives.

The second repeat, and the more useful one: both actions are dated to a calendar event rather than a price. Slim's 13D event date is 30 October, the restructuring milestone. Zuckerberg's transaction date is 4 November, the day after a ballot. Neither date is a price low. When the trigger is a corporate or political deadline rather than a valuation, the action is about entitlement and timing, not about whether the asset is cheap — and screens built on price and volume will not see it at all.